Energetic materials (EMs) provide the potential for significant advances in such microscale energy-demanding systems and applications as actuators, explosives, igniters, propulsion units, and power sources. Nanoscale EMs (nEMs), also known as nanoenergetic materials, offer the promise of much higher energy densities, faster rates of energy release, greater stabilities and probabilities against reaction, and more security (sensitivity to unwanted reaction initiation). The terms “nano” and “micro” are used by those skilled in the art rather arbitrarily to mean extremely small, such as at least one dimension within a range of tens to thousands of nanometers (a nanometer being a billionth of a meter). The concepts described herein are applicable to a variety of energetic materials as well as nanoenergetic materials.
Nano-energetic materials are mixtures of fuel and oxidizers closely packed together for a self-sustaining, high temperature reaction. Tiny particles have increased surface area over larger particles. Close proximity of the fuel and the oxidizer create waves of energy as the flame propagates through the solid material. Energy from adjacent layers ignites the fuel/oxidizer mixture. Material can be used as prepared or modified with polymers or explosives and used as a primers for explosives or propellants. Materials of this type have potential application in mining, demolitions, precision cutting, explosive welding, surface treatment and hardening of materials, pulse owner, crystallization and solar cells, sintering, micro-aerospace, satellite platforms, military applications and biomedical fields that destroy localized pathological tissues. Other prominent applications include thermite torches for underwater and atmospheric cutting or perforation, electronic hardware devices, additives to propellants and explosives having increased performance, pyrotechnic switches, airbag gas generator materials, high-temperature stable igniters, freestanding insertable heat sources, devices to breach ordnance cases to relieve pressure during fuel fires, thermal battery heat sources,incendiary projectiles,delay fuses, additives to propellants to increase burn rate without decrease of specific impulse and full sized shape-charged liners.
Some current technologies can be used to measure reaction characteristics such as propagation velocity. For instance, high speed cameras can measure reaction propagation velocity, but such high-speed cameras are relatively expensive and might be damaged in particularly hot, hostile, or caustic environments. Fiber optic based measurements require one data acquisition channel per measurement site, and thus tends to form a complex solution. It is desirable to limit the number of acquisition channels necessary to measure reaction propagation velocity.
Therefore, there is a need in the art for a detector for determining a characteristic of a reaction of an energetic material (including a nanoenergetic material).